Convenors:

 

Bobby Banerjee

Professor of Management, Cass Business School, City University of London, UK

bobby.banerjee.1@city.ac.uk

​

Julieta Godfrid

PhD Candidate, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina

JulietaGodfrid@hotmail.com

 

Rajiv Maher

Marie-Curie Postdoc Research Fellow, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

rmaher@outlook.com

 

Jacobo Ramirez

Assistant Professor in Latin American Business Development, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

jara.msc@cbs.dk

 

Diego Vasquez-Brust

Professor of Corporate Sustainability, Portsmouth Business School, Portsmouth University, UK

diego.vazquez-brust@port.ac.uk 

 

Suggested domains: CSR, Social movements, Development, Political ecology, Extractives sector

 

 

Call for papers

 

 

This sub-theme focuses on resilience, defined as the capacity of an individual or community to withstand and recover from adverse change, in the context of socio-environmental conflicts.  In particular we are interested how key market, state and civil society actors develop capabilities for resilience during conflicts over resource extraction.  According to Environmental Justice Atlas there are more than 2100 environmental conflicts around the world, and 687 in Latin America and the Caribbean region alone (EJOLT, 2017).  Socio-environmental conflicts have been studied in a variety of disciplines including geography, sociology, anthropology, development studies and organization studies amongst others. Researchers have studied how social movements emerge out of conflicts (Bebbington et al, 2008; Kraemer, Whiteman and Banerjee 2013; Maher, 2015; and Ramirez, 2015); the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) or irresponsibility in alleviating or exacerbating conflicts (Banerjee, 2008; Whiteman and Cooper, 2016; Yakovleva, Vazquez-Brust, and Mutti, 2013); the role of the state in environmental conflicts (Lewicki, Gray and Elliot, 2003) and governance challenges in natural resource extraction (Banerjee, 2011; 2017).

 

Resistance is a key component of resilience.  Community resistance to extractive projects in the global south are also livelihood struggles resulting from ecological, economic and cultural differences (Escobar, 2006).  Conflicts arise because of incommensurable values and meanings assigned to nature and natural resources by different groups.  The defense of nature and place, which is the basis of many Indigenous resistance movements, thus becomes both a defense of the source of livelihood as well as a defense of cultural identity.

 

In socio-environmental conflicts communities opposed to megaprojects like mines and dams often find themselves locked in a zero sum game against corporations and the state.  Inevitably these conflicts involve negotiations, compromises, co-optation and contestations.  In some cases effective community mobilization has led to stoppages of mega mining projects such as in Peru and Ecuador (Bebbington et al, 2008).  In other cases community resistance has failed to stop extractive projects due to counter-mobilization strategies deployed by corporations through their corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives (Bebbington, et al 2008; Ehrnström‐Fuentes; and Maher, 2015).

 

Communities use a variety of tactics to oppose mega projects including legal challenges, political activism, direct action, the strategic use of social media and videos for campaigning. Simultaneously, over the years corporations and the state have learned how to counter-mobilize projects using ‘soft power’ compliance measures and international standards. Such standards include the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the World Bank/International Finance Corporation Performance Standards, OECD Guidelines for Multinational Corporations, Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (ILO 169) and industry association guidelines such as the International Council Mining and Metals (ICMM) guidelines where dialogue, consensus building and collaboration as partners are central elements. Other more innovative and creative forms of corporate-counter mobilization include benefits sharing, rewriting local histories (Barrick Gold hired an anthropologist to write a book about the historical identity of the local Diaguita community to counter claims that mining is not part of their history at Pascua Lama in Chile[1]), and surveillance via drones[2] as claimed by a Mapuche community resisting the construction of a Norwegian state corporation dam.

 

For this sub-theme we are especially interested in receiving empirical and conceptual papers from communities in Latin America and elsewhere that are resisting megaprojects.  We invite papers from from researchers who can divulge to us new learnings from how the different key actors (community, civil society, business and the state) are enacting resilience in the face of socio-environmental conflicts.  We are seeking papers that will push the theoretical and empirical boundaries of scholarship on resilience and resistance that can enable us to envision new horizons of dissent, change and the organization of resistance movements. Papers can explore, but are not restricted to, the following themes::

 

1. Why are there conflicts over megaprojects despite substantial efforts by multi-stakeholder initiatives to respect human rights and create win-win situations for all stakeholders?

2. How do conflicts shape communities’ priorities and strategies?

3. What are the risks and vulnerabilities faced by communities resisting mega projects?

4. How does resilience enable agency at the local grass roots level? What are the enabling and inhibiting factors that influence the capacity of individuals and communities to act?

5. How is resilience organized? How do local actors engage with existing institutional arrangements to promote their cause? 

6. What new forms of organization emerge from resilience and collective action? 

7. What role do states play in resilience? What are the state apparatuses of repression and violence that are deployed against resistance movements? How do these movements respond to state violence?

8. How do corporations and their industry associations respond to resistance movements? What ‘stakeholder engagement’ strategies do corporations deploy? What role do state agencies and NGOs play in anti-corporate movements?

9. What are the gaps in implementation of international standards and CSR policies that lead to conflict? 

10. What has changed from the ways communities and corporate actors resist and counter one another over the past few decades, especially in Latin America that is fertile ground for such conflicts? 

11. How is the role of the state, civil society and others evolving within these contexts of conflict and resistance in Latin America?

12. Critical perspectives on resilience: how and why has resilience become a key theme in policy documents of supranational organizations like the United Nations, World Bank and World Trade Organizations?  In what ways, if any, does resilience reflect a neoliberal project where states are abdicating their responsibilities to their citizens?

 

References

• Banerjee, S. B. (2008). Corporate social responsibility: The good, the bad and the ugly. Critical sociology, 34(1), 51-79.

• Banerjee, S.B. (2011). Voices of the governed: Towards a theory of the translocal. Organization, 18 (3): 323-344.

• Banerjee, S.B. (2017).  Transnational power and translocal governance: The politics of corporate responsibility.  Human Relations.  In press.

• Bebbington A, Bebbington DH, Bury J, Lingan J, Munoz JP and Scurrah M (2008). Mining and social movements: Struggles over livelihood and rural territorial development in the Andes.  World Development 36: 2888-2905.

• Ehrnström‐Fuentes, M. (2015). Delinking legitimacies: A pluriversal perspective on political CSR. Journal of Management Studies.

• EJOLT (2017)  Mapping environmental justice.  Environmental Justice Organizations, Liabilities and Trade.  http://ejatlas.org (accessed 11 May, 2017).

• Escobar A (2006) An ecology of difference: Equality and conflict in a glocalized world. European Journal of Anthropology 47:120–37.

• Kraemer, R., Whiteman, G., & Banerjee, S.B. (2013).  Conflict and astroturfing in Niyamgiri: The importance of national advocacy networks in anti-corporate social movements.  Organization Studies, 34 (5&6): 823-852.

• Lewicki, R., Gray, B., & Elliot, M. (Eds.) (2003). Making sense of intractable environmental conflicts.  Washington DC: Island Press.

• Maher, R. (2015). The dynamics of local communities movements opposing corporate projects and their strategies for a social license to operate: Lessons from the Extractives sector in South America. Transnational Institute https://www.tni.org/files/download/lessons_from_the_extractives_sector.pdf

• Ramirez, J. (2015). Indigenous communities and mega-projects. Development-Oriented Corporate Social Responsibility: Volume 1: Multinational Corporations and the Global Context, 1, 79.

• Román, J. (2012). Energía, territorios y poblaciones indígenas: Análisis retrospectivo del mega-proyecto hidroeléctrico Ralco. Revista Conservación Ambiental, 2(1), 37-42.

• Yakovleva, N., Vazquez-Brust, D., & Mutti, D. (2010). Corporate social responsibility of mining companies in Argentina. Climate Change and Green Growth: Innovating for Sustainability, Seoul, Korea.

• Whiteman, G., & Cooper, W. H. (2016). Decoupling Rape. Academy of Management Discoveries, 2(2), 115–154. https://doi.org/10.5465/amd.2014.0064

 

[1] http://barrickbeyondborders.com/people/2009/03/the-diaguita-of-chile-supporting-the-determination-of-an-indigenous-people/

[2] http://weichanpilmaiquen.blogspot.co.uk